DENVER (AP) — Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a set of health care bills into law Friday enshrining access to abortion and gender-affirming procedures and medications, as the Democratic-led state it tries to become a safe haven for its neighbors, whose attention Republican leaders are curtailing.
The goal of the legislation is to ensure that people in neighboring states and beyond can go to Colorado to have an abortion, start puberty blocking, or receive gender affirming surgery without fear of persecution. The border states of Wyoming and Oklahoma have passed abortion bans, and Utah has severely restricted transgender care for minors.
Many states that ban abortion or transgender care are also criminalizing travel to the states for the purpose of accessing legal health care.
The conflicting laws are setting the stage for interstate disputes comparable to the patchwork of same-sex marriage laws that existed until 2015, or the 19th-century legal conflict over whether runaway enslaved people in free states remained the property of slaveholders. when they fled north.
With the new laws, Colorado joins Illinois as a progressive peninsula offering reproductive rights to residents of conservative states on three sides. Illinois abortion clinics now serve people who live within an 1,800-mile (2,900-kilometer) stretch of 11 southern states that have largely banned abortion.
California and New York are considering similar bills after the US Supreme Court. knocked Roe down. against wadeputting abortion laws in the hands of state legislatures.
Colorado’s neighbor to the south, New Mexico, is also controlled by democrats and signed a similar abortion bill earlier this year. Legally protects those who seek abortions or gender-affirming care, and those who provide the treatments, from interstate investigations.
Governor Polis added the first layer of protection against abortion a year ago, signing an executive order prohibiting state agencies from cooperating with out-of-state investigations regarding reproductive health. One of the bills he will sign on Friday makes that order law. Like the New Mexico law, it blocks subpoenas, subpoenas, and search warrants from states that decide to prosecute someone for abortion.
It extends those protections to transgender patients who circumvent restrictions in their own states. Gender-affirming healthcare has been available for decades, some states have recently banned minors from accessing it, even with parental consent. Hospitals in some of those states say gender-affirming surgeries are rarely recommended for minors anyway. Puberty blockers are more common.
Conservative states are backing down. Idaho passed a bill that prohibits providing abortion pills to minors and helping them leave the state to terminate a pregnancy without parental consent.
The Colorado law comes as medical abortions are in limbo in the US and mail-order prescriptions for a crucial abortion drug are all but banned pending the outcome of a federal court case.
Also Friday, Polis signed a measure banning the “deceptive practices” of anti-abortion centers, which market themselves as abortion clinics but do not actually offer the procedure. Instead, they try to convince patients not to terminate their pregnancies. The bill also prohibits sites from offering to reverse a medical abortion.
A third bill signed Friday requires large employers to offer coverage for the full cost of an abortion, with an exception for those who object on religious grounds. It exempts public employees because the Colorado constitution prohibits the use of public funds for abortions. ____ Jesse Bedayn contributed to this report. Bedayn is a staff member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on covert issues.
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